Tom Cruise angered by comparisons to absent father

Tom Cruise grew incensed during a court deposition to fight magazine allegations he’s a bad dad after defence lawyers compared the actor to his own absent father. The Mission: Impossible star has launched a $50 million (£33 million) defamation case against publishers at In Touch and Life & Style after taking issue with articles published in 2012 suggesting he had abandoned his daughter Suri following his split from Katie Holmes.
He was quizzed about the allegations in September (13), when lawyers for the magazines asked if there were any parenting similarities between him and his dad, Thomas Cruise Mapother III, who split from the actor’s mother, Mary, in 1974, when the future movie star was 12.
According to court papers, the 51 year old bristled at the question and fired back, “Absolutely none. My father didn’t pay money, he didn’t call… Even the fact that you would suggest that I was being like my father, it’s the same thing my father did, and suggesting that that’s something that I’m doing in terms of abandoning my children, I find that greatly offensive… My parents were divorced and I didn’t see him.”
During the hearing, Cruise defended himself against reports he went more than 100 days without seeing young Suri, now seven, following his shock summer 2012 separation from Holmes, stating, “When a divorce occurs, things change… now you have to ask for permission and organise schedules to make things happen… It’s not an ideal situation…
“Certainly what doesn’t change is the love that I have for my daughter, the fact that I didn’t abandon her emotionally, physically or otherwise.”
He also told lawyers that his devotion to Scientology was “one of” the reasons behind his divorce, although he later reportedly asked to change his statement, insisting, “Katie has never told me that this was a reason for our divorce.”
The defamation case is due to begin in a New York City court next week (begs11Nov13).